Left 4 Dead is a lot of fun the first time through with a real friend that you know and can interact with verbally. OTher than that it's way more generic and repetative that anyone wants to admit. How to make Left 4 Dead better?
1)MORE SCENARIOS, MORE NARRATIVE! This really isn't a narrative game. And the characters revealing themselves amid the fighting doesn't seem to work either. I played through all scenarios one time and about 5 of the chapters twice I only once heard Zoey say "This reminds me of where I grew up". That's great Zoey but it doesn't = a story! So if you want to create a successful narrative/multiplayer hybrid what do you do? More narrative! More Multiplayer! Give the players a greater number of unique things to do! Have sections that they need to help each other through physically such as climbing over a high fence, scouting a location while another player grabs valuable loot to share. Essentially you need to borrow more from what makes the 'journey' of a good zombie movie more exciting than the 'journey' in this game. Also more scenarios! 4 multiplayer maps aren't adequate. 4 narrative levels in a single player game definitely isn't adequate so why are 4 scenarios in this game adequate? No the senarios being chopped up into 4 mini levels doesn't count either. Those chapters are far too short to = 1 single player level.
2) What else? Zombie stories are exciting because it's like a monster movie that feels like it could almost actually happen in the real world. The monsters are people! It's brilliant. How does Left 4 Dead mess this up? It makes mutant zombies that are completely unbelievable. Valve introduces giant behemoth zombies and zombies with tongues that that are 50+ feet long. They might fill enemy niches but they make my level of phsychological immersion plummet through the floor. Where does this work? The boomer. The boomer is a giant obese character. He doesn't strain the imagination and he a believable and wonderful enemy variety. Valve needs to keep the regular drones, the boomber, a toned down version of the queen and make a larger variety of regular drone zombies with unique abilities that don't take you out of the realistic fantasy.
The final two major offendors? Clipping and the Director A.I./level design.
3) It's 2008+ you need to spend some real R&D time and make the hords of zombies collide with each other and walls in some way that doesn't allow clipping and doesn't invlove a large memory/processing overhead. It's hard you say? Well that should have been a major focus of your development! It completely destroys the illusion, end of story.
4) The A.I. director? It either isn't very smart or isn't provided enough options to really make the game seem that unique. Dropping a queen in random spots and making zombies pop out of the bushes 10 feet ahead one time and then 25 feet ahead the next time doesn't equal the promise of a whole A.I. system that is strategically changing the game. If this is your answer to have a few levels instead of bunch of levels then you need to empower the A.I. director to change the variety WAAAAY more. One time through your path should be blocked and force you to take a left path through the train yard. The next time there should be a train that has flung itself off the end of it's track and blocked that path (zombie conductor, don't ask) which in turn forces you to go right. That's right: story driven branching paths! Also on these paths there should be at least 3 levels of change. 1 being where the zombies are (this seems to be the only mode of change that the A.I. Director can act on right now). Level 2: basic level modifications. there are windows on the shack that allow zombies to break in behind you. Next time the shack has no windows and health in it. The next time there is no shack but it's shown to be burned down (as if in some other fight happened there so that you don't feel like the possibility of a shack being there is ruined). Level 3: totally different branching paths driven by possible out of story scenarios as described earlier.
Left 4 Dead is already so close to be great that if you do half of these things it would be truly great and memorable. Do all of these things and people would talk about Left 4 Dead for years and years like it was the next Goldeneye.
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